Leaving for Laos

Tomorrow I am off for Laos, or at the very least Chiang Rai, which is on the way to the Lao border. I’m going to take this part of the journey slow. There is no reason to rush. There is no reason to make a 1600 mile mad dash up the peninsula. I don’t have any dates that need to be kept any longer and am totally free. Who knows how long I will stay in Laos. If prices are cheaper than they are here in Thailand and Luang Prabang is every bit as beautiful as my father says it is, I might just stay a while.

My near term plans are as follows: hang out in Luang Prabang for as long as I want. Then meander down the Mekong to Vientiane where I will get the following visas: Cambodian, Vietnamese and Burmese. After that I’ll head off to Vietnam, visiting Da Nang for family and personal reasons, then on to Ho Chi Minh City. After that it’s Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. Then I’ll dash back across Thailand and make the Three Pagodas Pass into Myanmar. Sadly, there are no open border crossings between Myanmar and India. This is a pain because one cardinal rule of this journey is “no flying.” (The other one is penguins, but that’s months down the road, literally and figuratively.) So, I’ll more than likely have to backtrack to Singapore and catch a cargo ship to Chennai, India. (Although I am debating a month in Indonesia, East Timor and the Phillipines and then catching ship in Singapore to Chennai.)

As for Thailand and the present moment: I’m struggling against that ‘empty’ feeling I have. Part of it is certainly fear of the unknown, terra incognita and all that. But another part is that, to my surprise, I grew comfortable here in Chiang Mai. Sure the course was a bugger, but the easy familiarity of Chiang Mai and the new friends, the food and just the atmosphere really did get to me.

And as for Thailand in general I have a few things to say. When you are in Thailand you know it. Although modernity is ever present here it is an ever present Thai-informed and made modernity. Thai’s have a distinct culture and you sense it the moment you arrive. It’s a pleasant, easy going culture too. One thing I noticed is that although students and young women in particular speak very softly, there is no premium put on a high pitched voice like there is in Chinese, Korean and Japanese culture. On TV women’s voices aren’t those tingy, high pitched faux girly giggles. They are natural and if a Thai woman has a relatively deep voice then that’s how she speaks. This may sound like a strange observation but coming from a largely Chinese culture in Singapore (and Chinese influenced advertising) it was a pleasant surprise. (And easy on the ears.)

Another thing about Thai’s is that they are not pushy people. Sure, there are a few touts and hawkers, but mostly when you say no, they accept it and move on. There is also a great deal less haggling here than I anticipated. (And I love to haggle, so more’s the pity.) They have a wonderful sense of humor and seem to be perpetually smiling. I’ve visited places (Russia always comes to mind) where everyone is always frowning. Not so here. Just yesterday I paid a cobbler less than a dollar to patch up some sandals of mine. He smiled the entire time, humming some wonderful Thai tune.

The music here is something I never could quite get, however. It’s heavily Western influenced, especially the pop music. But there is this strange quality I could never quite identify. I’d be sitting in a coffee shop studying the present simple perfect and would hear a melody to a song I knew back home, only to have the melody turn into something new and different. This happened countless times.

Will I ever miss the local sausage too! Wow! Stuffed as it is with garlic and gelatin noodles and fresh basil and who knows what kind of meat. (They don’t eat dogs or cats here that I am aware of.) Really, if you ever get around these parts, try the local sausages. They are delish!

Another pleasant observation: when pedestrians step into the street Thai’s stop, be they in a car or on a moped, etc. . . nice change from many places I have been. Here’s another thing I learned that I didn’t know before: Thai and Lao are similar languages and mutually intelligible in the sense that Norwegians and Swedes can understand each other. I always thought Lao was a more Vietnamese or Cantonese-like language, but apparently it’s much more like Thai.

Which brings me to my last observation and pretty much brings me full circle: when you arrive in Thailand you are instantaneously bombarded by the Thai alphabet (all 40something characters of it). There is little of the Latin script around these parts and at first I found this a tad daunting. But now, I love the sly elegance of the script and will miss it.

On that note I will bid you all adieu until I arrive in Laos and have more to report from another land, another place, another people. All new, all exciting and all so very real.